I knew McPhee was capable of being quite humorous, so I had heard, but hadn’t read anything with its intention to be funny or sarcastic until I read “Whiff.” I appreciated (and loved) it for many reasons: the subtly about it, its layout, and who the article was directed towards. It’s a short article compared to McPhee’s other articles. The intended message was short and sweet, and in just a page McPhee said what he had to say.
McPhee begins by telling us that William Shawn, the editor of The New Yorker, thinks the worst subject to write about is the future. Only three times did he allow McPhee to write future-related stories, and all three times McPhee got it wrong. Three whiffs equal three strikes. The autumn of 2003 is approaching and George W. Bush is up for re-election. McPhee has a theory: his previous future-related stories never panned out, so it’s quite possible that his next one won’t, either. So he says he’s going to write about Bush getting re-elected: “I intend to complete as soon as I can—certainly in this autumn of 2003—a detailed description, in the future definite, of the second Administration of George W. Bush."
This article is great not only because it’s bashing Bush, but also because of the path he chose to get the message across. McPhee could have written this various ways, one including a direct and “straight-to-the-point” approach. He could have just simply stated that he didn’t care for Bush for the first four years, and definitely doesn’t want him re-elected for another four years, but that would have been too easy. No, no, not McPhee. When you’re a writer like McPhee, you got to entertain your readers and make them think the unexpected. Unless you read the ending first, there’s no possible way to know where McPhee was going with the article. And even after reading it in its entirety, you have to know what’s going on in politics, otherwise it’ll go right over your head… and McPhee does not spell it out for you.
I thought this article was ingeniously funny. He wrote it to make a point, and one point only, and wrote it as though he was telling a joke with the punch line at the end. I wouldn’t be able to do that.
By: Jody McIntyre
I knew McPhee was capable of being quite humorous, so I had heard, but hadn’t read anything with its intention to be funny or sarcastic until I read “Whiff.” I appreciated (and loved) it for many reasons: the subtly about it, its layout, and who the article was directed towards. It’s a short article compared to McPhee’s other articles. The intended message was short and sweet, and in just a page McPhee said what he had to say.
McPhee begins by telling us that William Shawn, the editor of The New Yorker, thinks the worst subject to write about is the future. Only three times did he allow McPhee to write future-related stories, and all three times McPhee got it wrong. Three whiffs equal three strikes. The autumn of 2003 is approaching and George W. Bush is up for re-election. McPhee has a theory: his previous future-related stories never panned out, so it’s quite possible that his next one won’t, either. So he says he’s going to write about Bush getting re-elected: “I intend to complete as soon as I can—certainly in this autumn of 2003—a detailed description, in the future definite, of the second Administration of George W. Bush."
This article is great not only because it’s bashing Bush, but also because of the path he chose to get the message across. McPhee could have written this various ways, one including a direct and “straight-to-the-point” approach. He could have just simply stated that he didn’t care for Bush for the first four years, and definitely doesn’t want him re-elected for another four years, but that would have been too easy. No, no, not McPhee. When you’re a writer like McPhee, you got to entertain your readers and make them think the unexpected. Unless you read the ending first, there’s no possible way to know where McPhee was going with the article. And even after reading it in its entirety, you have to know what’s going on in politics, otherwise it’ll go right over your head… and McPhee does not spell it out for you.
I thought this article was ingeniously funny. He wrote it to make a point, and one point only, and wrote it as though he was telling a joke with the punch line at the end. I wouldn’t be able to do that.